KIRKUS REVIEW

The
theft of an original Hemingway manuscript leads to the possible discovery of
the author's famous lost briefcase full of stories in this south-of-the-border
caper.

Henry
“Coop” Cooper
is an American writer making a tidy living off a series of novels about a Scottish
vampire detective.
Like many a hack before him, he's planning the novel that will finally bring
him serious literary credibility. At the Mexican backwater where he's taken
refuge, Coop and the ramshackle resort's equally ramshackle owner, Grady Doyle, hear the tale of a thief who
has purloined an original manuscript of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast
and, with it, what he believes to be clues to the location of a legendary cache
of lost Hemingway writings. Their chief adversary is a ruthless rare-book
collector out for blood as well as the goods. The bloodthirstiness of
collectors is not a bad inspiration for a thriller, and the general tone of
sarcasm and dissolution, along with characters who seem to be wisecrackers more
than tough guys, are some of the elements you might want in a shaggy dog tale
of pursuit. But, at least in terms of its tone, this novel is written with a confidence
it hasn't earned. The plot construction is shaky and often confusing, the
characters ready with a quip but not particularly engaging in themselves.

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